Re: Thoughts on credential switching

[Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Jeremy Allison <jra@samba.org> wrote:
>
> Amen to that :-).
>
> However, after talking with Jeff and Jim at CollabSummit,
> I was 'encouraged' to make my opinions known on the list.
>
> To me, calling the creds handle a file descriptor just
> feels wrong. IT *isn't* an fd, you can't read/write/poll
> on it, and it's only done as a convenience to get the
> close-on-exec semantics and the fact that the creds are
> already hung off the fd's in kernel space.

Windows calls these things "handles."  Linux has "file descriptors,"
and there's plenty of precedent for things that aren't files.

>
> I'd rather any creads call use a different type, even if
> it's a typedef of 'int -> creds_handle_t', just to make
> it really clear it's *NOT* an fd.
>
> That way we can also make it clear this thing only has
> meaning to a thread group, and SHOULD NOT (and indeed
> preferably CAN NOT) be passed between processes.
>

If you want those semantics, then stick a struct pid * in there for
the tgid of the cretor and make sure that current's tgid matches when
you try to use it.

I think they'd be more useful without that check, though.

BTW, what do you want to have happen on fork?  I think they should keep working.

> Cheers,
>
>         Jeremy.



-- 
Andy Lutomirski
AMA Capital Management, LLC